Our Leadership

Dr. Shefali Agarwal is executive vice president and chief medical and development officer at Epizyme, Inc., a fully-integrated, commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company developing and delivering novel epigenetic therapies. Prior to joining Epizyme in 2018, she held leadership positions across medical research, clinical development, clinical operations and medical affairs. Dr. Agarwal most recently served as chief medical officer at SQZ Biotech, where she built and led the clinical development organization, which included clinical research operations and the regulatory function. Before SQZ Biotech, Dr. Agarwal also held leadership positions at Curis and Tesaro. At Curis, she oversaw the Phase 2 study for its dual HDAC/PI3K inhibitor in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and the Phase 1 study in solid tumors for its oral checkpoint inhibitor. At Tesaro, she led the NDA and EMA submissions for ZEJULA®️ (niraparib) in ovarian cancer. Dr. Agarwal has also held positions of increasing responsibility at Covidien, AVEO Oncology and Pfizer. In addition to receiving her medical degree, Dr. Agarwal holds a master’s of public health and a master’s of science in business. She currently sits on the Board of Directors of Fate Therapeutics.

Andrew Allen, M.D., Ph.D. co-founded Gritstone bio, Inc. and has served as President, CEO and a board member since 2015. In 2009, Dr. Allen co-founded Clovis Oncology and served as Chief Medical Officer until 2015, driving development of Rucaparib, a PARP inhibitor. Prior he was Chief Medical Officer at Pharmion Corporation, developing Vidaza, the first approved DNA methylation inhibitor, until acquisition by Celgene in 2008. Dr. Allen also served in clinical development leadership roles at Chiron Corporation and Abbott Laboratories, and worked at McKinsey & Company. He currently serves on the board of directors of TCR2 Therapeutics and Sierra Oncology (both public biopharma companies) and Revitope Oncology and Verge Genomics (both private biopharma companies). He previously served on the board of directors of Epizyme (developers of the first approved histone methylation transferase inhibitor) and Cell Design Labs (acquired by Gilead Sciences in 2017). Dr. Allen qualified in medicine at Oxford University and received a Ph.D. in immunology from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London.

Richard Heyman, Ph.D. has served as a member of our board of directors since November 2015. Dr. Heyman is executive chairman and co-founder of Metacrine, Inc., a biotechnology company developing new therapeutics for the treatment of diabetes and related metabolic disorders. From August 2013 to April 2015, he served as president and chief executive officer of Seragon Pharmaceuticals Inc., or Seragon, a privately-held biotechnology company, which was acquired by Genentech in 2014. Prior to Seragon, in 2009 he co-founded and served as president and chief executive officer of Aragon Pharmaceuticals, Inc., or Aragon, until it was purchased by Johnson & Johnson in 2013. Earlier in his career, Dr. Heyman co-founded and served as chief scientific officer of X-Ceptor Therapeutics, Inc. and was vice president of research at Ligand Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He is the author or inventor on more than 120 publications and patents. Dr. Heyman serves as vice chairman of the board of trustees of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, or the Salk Institute, and is a board member of BIOCOM Life Sciences Association of California. He is also a member of the Therapeutic Advisory Board for aTyr Pharma, Inc. and serves on the Executive Committee of the University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center. Dr. Heyman received a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Minnesota. He was an NIH post-doctoral fellow and staff scientist at the Salk Institute. We believe that Dr. Heyman is qualified to serve on our board of directors due to his educational background and his experience as a board member and senior executive of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.

Elaine V. Jones, Ph.D., has served as a member of our board of directors since September 2019. Dr. Jones was most recently vice president, worldwide business development and senior partner at Pfizer Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Pfizer Inc. During her tenure from 2008 to 2019, Dr. Jones was responsible for managing biotechnology and healthcare investments for Pfizer, as well as serving on the board of directors for several biotechnology companies. Prior to this, Dr. Jones held the position of general partner at EuclidSR Partners, a venture firm specializing in private investment in both private and public equity within the health sciences, healthcare, biopharmaceutical sectors. Dr. Jones began her investing career in 1999 at S.R. One, the corporate investment fund of GlaxoSmithKline. During her venture career, she served on the boards of more than 20 early to mid-stage biotechnology, therapeutic and pharmaceutical companies. Previously, Dr. Jones was the director of scientific licensing at SmithKline Beecham and a research scientist in the research and development division of SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals. She received a B.S. in biology from Juniata College and a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Pittsburgh.

Steve Krognes has served as a member of our board of directors since July 2018. Mr. Krognes has served as chief financial officer of Denali Therapeutics Inc., or Denali, since October 2015. Mr. Krognes joined Denali from Genentech, where he served as chief financial officer and a member of the executive committee from April 2009 to September 2015. Mr. Krognes also oversaw Genentech’s site services organization between 2011 and 2015, and Genentech’s information technology organization between 2009 and 2011. He chaired the Genentech Access to Care Foundation between 2009 and 2015. From January 2004 to April 2009, Mr. Krognes served as head of mergers and acquisitions and a member of the finance executive committee at Roche, a Swiss biotechnology company. From July 2002 to December 2003, Mr. Krognes served as director of mergers and acquisitions at Danske Bank based in Norway. From April 2000 to June 2002, he was a venture capitalist with Pylonia Ventures, a Swedish venture investments company. Prior to that, Mr. Krognes worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, based in London and Boston. Mr. Krognes currently serves as a member of the board of directors of RLS Global AB, a Swedish life sciences company. Mr. Krognes served as a board member of the California Life Sciences Association between 2010 and 2015, and the California Academy of Sciences, a private scientific and educational institution, between 2014 and 2018. He received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and his B.S. in economics from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Clare Fisher has served as a member of our board of directors since January 2022. Ms. Fisher currently serves as svp of business development and mergers & acquisitions at BeiGene, a global, science-driven biotechnology company focused on developing innovative and affordable medicines to improve treatment outcomes and access for patients worldwide. Ms. Fisher has over 20 years of experience in healthcare corporate and business development, leading collaborations, licensing, M&A, investments and divestments across many technologies and therapeutic areas. Prior to joining BeiGene, Ms. Fisher was chief business officer of Kaleido Bioscience, a company dedicated to targeting the microbiome to treat a variety of diseases, and held senior global roles at Shire plc, Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Blueprint Medicines, and Genzyme Corporation. Ms. Fisher holds a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Bath, as well as an M.B.A. from Henley Management College in the U.K.

Dr. Naiyer A. Rizvi is chief medical officer at Synthekine, a private, engineered and synthetic cytokine therapeutics company. Until May 2021, he was the Price Family Professor of Medicine, Director of Thoracic Oncology and Co-Director of Cancer Immunotherapy at Columbia University Medical Center He received an M.D. at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, and completed a fellowship in medical oncology at Beth Israel Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rizvi was an attending physician in thoracic oncology and early drug development at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where his translational research focused on immune-checkpoint blockade drug development. His research studies were integral to the approval of immune-checkpoint blockade in lung cancer, including approval of nivolumab in squamous lung cancer and pembrolizumab in non-small cell lung cancer. He authored a publication in Science of data from a landmark trial -- the first study to demonstrate a statistically significant correlation between mutations and neoantigens with durable benefit to immune-checkpoint blockade. Dr. Rizvi is a co-founder of Gritstone.

Dr. Timothy A. Chan is a cancer geneticist, physician scientist and expert in cancer immuno-genomics and immunotherapy. He is vice chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology and the Frederick Adler Chair at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). He also is a member of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at MSKCC and director of the Division of Translational Oncology in the Department of Radiation Oncology. Dr. Chan received an M.D. and Ph.D. in genetics from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and completed a residency in radiation oncology and a post-doctoral fellowship in epigenetics. His main interests are utilizing cancer genomics, functional genomics and statistical genetics to dissect the molecular determinants of tumor aggressiveness and response to cancer therapies. He led the team that first described mutational burden as a determinant of clinical benefit to immunotherapy and showed that mutational landscapes in lung cancer help determine response to immune checkpoint blockade. His lab is developing pioneering approaches to examine neoantigen landscapes and the genomic foundations of response to cancer immunotherapy. He has authored numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals including Nature, Science, Cell, Nature Genetics, the New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine. Dr. Chan is a co-founder of Gritstone bio.

Dr. James L. Gulley is an expert in human immune responses to cancer immunotherapies. He is chief of the Genitourinary Malignancies Branch at the Center for Cancer Research (CCR) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He also serves as senior investigator and head of the Immunotherapy Section and director of the Medical Oncology Service in the Office of the Clinical Director at the CCR. He is an internationally recognized expert in cancer immunotherapy, therapeutic cancer vaccines, immune checkpoint inhibitors, and the combination of immunotherapy with other therapies. Since 1998, he has conducted investigator-initiated clinical trials at the NCI evaluating cancer vaccines and other immunostimulatory agents, as well as the combination of immunotherapy with other treatment strategies. He played a central role in the clinical development of a prostate cancer vaccine that was created at the NCI, and currently serves as principal investigator of an international, randomized Phase 3 clinical trial of that vaccine. He is also the coordinating principal investigator for an international trial of an anti-PDL1 antibody.

Dr. Graham Lord is an expert in T-cell biology. He is professor of medicine at King’s College London and head of the Department of Experimental Immunobiology and director of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Center at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital and King’s College London. Since his appointment in 2006, Dr. Lord has built up a research group at King’s College investigating fundamental immune cell biology, and the translation of this knowledge to the diagnosis and treatment of patients with organ transplant rejection and autoimmune diseases. As director of the NIHR Biomedical Research Center, he is responsible for the delivery of programs of Translational Research and Experimental Medicine, with a significant part of the Center’s portfolio focused on regenerative and personalized medicine, advanced therapeutics and informatics. He was elected an NIHR Senior Investigator. As a National Health Service (NHS) consultant, he practices clinical nephrology and has a particular interest in renal and pancreatic transplantation. He trained in medicine at Cambridge University and undertook a period of research in molecular immunology at Imperial College London that led to a Ph.D. He conducted post-doctoral studies at Harvard University. Dr. Lord is a co-founder of Gritstone bio.

Dr. Naiyer A. Rizvi is chief medical officer at Synthekine, a private, engineered and synthetic cytokine therapeutics company. Until May 2021, he was the Price Family Professor of Medicine, Director of Thoracic Oncology and Co-Director of Cancer Immunotherapy at Columbia University Medical Center He received an M.D. at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, and completed a fellowship in medical oncology at Beth Israel Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rizvi was an attending physician in thoracic oncology and early drug development at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where his translational research focused on immune-checkpoint blockade drug development. His research studies were integral to the approval of immune-checkpoint blockade in lung cancer, including approval of nivolumab in squamous lung cancer and pembrolizumab in non-small cell lung cancer. He authored a publication in Science of data from a landmark trial -- the first study to demonstrate a statistically significant correlation between mutations and neoantigens with durable benefit to immune-checkpoint blockade. Dr. Rizvi is a co-founder of Gritstone.

Dr. Alessandro Sette is an expert in understanding immune system-protein interactions. He is center head of the Division of Translational Immunology and Vaccine Discovery, director of the Center for Infectious Disease and Head of the Initiative for Emerging Diseases and Biodefense at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology. He has devoted more than 30 years of study to understanding basic mechanisms of antigen recognition and immune responses, measuring and predicting immune activity, and developing disease intervention strategies against cancer, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases and allergies. His research is focused on improving the understanding of how the body successfully battles infection, and conversely, how pathogens escape the immune system, causing the individual to succumb to disease. He has developed techniques to understand the T-cell response to common allergens, which has resulted in the development of bioinformatic tools used to map the human T-cell response to a large panel of common allergens. Dr. Sette earned a Dr.Biol.Sci.in immunology at the University of Rome and completed post-doctoral work at the Laboratory of Pathology, Cassaccia, in Rome, and at the National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine in Denver. He has authored more than 650 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals and has nearly 30 issued patents.

Eugene Zhukovsky, Ph.D., applies optimized monospecific and novel bispecific antibody platforms to the development of immunotherapeutics for cancer, with a particular focus on leveraging the biology of inhibitory and agonistic immune checkpoint modulators. Dr. Zhukovsky was the CSO of Affimed Therapeutics where he was responsible for the advancement of bispecific antibody therapeutics from discovery to the clinic. More recently he has been the chief scientific officer (CSO) of Biomunex Pharmaceuticals, where he realigned the company’s strategic focus towards immuno-oncology therapeutics by leveraging its proprietary bispecific antibody platform, the BiXAb®. He is also a co-Founder and Partner at ZM Scientific, a consultancy firm that advises biotechnology companies. Prior to Affimed, he served as Senior Research Fellow at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. leading antibody discovery efforts, and an Associate Director at Xencor, Inc. responsible for translational research efforts from discovery through development of several clinical candidates for hematological malignancies. Dr. Zhukovsky received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Brandeis University and performed a post-doctoral fellowship at Genentech, Inc.